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SoundCloud Manages Criticism As It Moves To Become The YouTube Of Audio

Fresh off the launch of its redesigned site, the audio sharing company had seen registered numbers pass the 30 million mark. Engagement was reaching unprecedented levels, according to CEO and cofounder Alexander Ljung, as more and more artists–among them Destiny’s Child and The Strokes–moved to the platform to share their tracks with the world.

But not everyone was happy.

Shortly after SoundCloud unveiled its new site, which included sleeker media players and reposting features, disgruntled users began to chime in, ironically using the audio social platform as a sounding board for their gripes. Their biggest concern? That their beloved sound collaboration and sharing tool was putting “form over function” as its owners sought to make SoundCloud a more viable business proposition by attracting a wider audience. One user, British songwriter Peter Owen, went as far as to say in an audio post that the company was “doing a Zuckerberg,” a jab suggesting that SoundCloud was seeking out profits like Facebook has at the expense of its current user base (Owen’s original speech has been removed from his page.)

SoundCloud cofounders Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung (right) have created a platform with more than 38 million registered users. (Steffen Jänicke for Forbes)

SoundCloud seems to see itself ”as the new FacebookFacebook in terms of their global ambitions,” says Owen, who began using the site in 2009. “Their main goal now seems to be to build it in preparation to either sell it or float it on the stock market.”

Therein lies the problem for startups hoping to scale: How do you maintain and attract new users and please investors without alienating early adopters? While Ljung remained mum on his company’s business plans when he spoke with FORBES back in January, he didn’t deny that SoundCloud was searching to broaden its influence. Now with 38 million users, the platform has users in almost every country around the world. It could hit 55 million users by year’s end as it registers 70,000 people a day. That’s quantifiable growth that goes a long way in justifying the company’s transformation, but at what cost to early adopters?

Those who feel alienated by the change point to the loss of community on a site that was once known for its ability to foster connections and collaborations among like-minded musicians and sound creators. Launched in 2008 from Berlin, SoundCloud became a fast favorite in German city’s electronic music scene, with cofounder Eric Wahlforss pushing it to local DJs as a grassroots means to share music. That ethos became the primary draw for early adapters like Owen, who called SoundCloud “classic” a “vibrant community” where you could get feedback from your peers. Not any more, say Owen and others, who believe that SoundCloud is shifting its dynamic to cater to listeners instead of creators, and thereby forgetting the individuals who populated the platform in its early days.

“They seem to be putting most of their energy into the big performers and providers,” wrote a commenter who identified himself as Peter Lehndorff on a FORBES print story.”[SoundCloud] isn’t what is used to be.”

For Owen and others disappointed by the change, complaints range from the alteration of the commenting feature (which is now too small, he says) to the disappearance of the Spotlight feature (which allowed some users to highlight certain work and audio tracks at the top of their profiles). Those frustrations have manifested themselves in the comments section of the company’s blog posts to product reviews, some of which have declared that the site is “optimized for listeners, not uploaders.”

Ljung says he’s listening. He admitted that the the platform isn’t 100% perfect and that the company released the new version of the site before it had completely translated old features. That led the Berlin-based startup to allow users to shift back to the old version for the time being. However, when asked about the negative feedback on the redesign, he suggests it’s a case of a vocal minority.

“There’s a huge amount of people that don’t speak explicitly what they think,” says the CEO. “But they speak a lot with their usage numbers. Companies usually see tremendous usage uplift. When Facebook introduced the newsfeed way back, it seemed like everybody was against it and yet usage went up like crazy.”

If numbers are any solace, Ljung can take comfort in SoundCloud’s massive upswing in usage. The company has more than tripled its user base since January 2012, when it had 10 million individuals registered. Since its redesign, average plays per artist have gone from about 6,900 a month in December to more than 12,000 plays in March, according to digital music tracker Next Big Sound.

“It is possible that this is due to a shift in the artist population–that is, if our users have been simply adding more popular artists lately, thus shifting up the mean,” says Alec Zopf, an engineer at Next Big Sound. “But we definitely see a corresponding trajectory of the overall number of SoundCloud plays we track per month, so it’s likely that this is at least a fairly reasonable approximation of the network at large.”

Antwan André Patton, better known as rapper Big Boi, started using the platform two years ago and picked up his usage of his site recently to promote new album Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors that was released in December. Songs teased from that album have over 300,000 plays each on SoundCloud, a tool that protects creators from piracy while still allowing them to connect with their fans, says Patton.

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Amazing. I love Soundcloud. As someone who works in the music industry as the social media geek and community manager, I’ve been watching Soundcloud EXPLODE as of late. I literally wrote this yesterday.

Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Soundcloud? My take on the elephant in the audio room http://bit.ly/SSSystem_Soundcloud

Thanks for the link… Reading through now. Great stuff! You’ve got the thorough business insider look. I’ve been thinking about this stuff for some time and most seem to have tunnel vision focused on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

What’s SoundCloud’s reasoning behind changing something that already attracts 70,000 new users in a day? It may not be the best analogy, but Reddit remains ungainly and hideous yet continues to gain influence. Are we going to see an actual user rebellion? Or is this more like when Facebook alters its UI?

I believe the reasoning here is: why attract 70,000 users a day when you can register 700,000 users a day? (That second number is total speculation on my part and is only used to illustrate my example.)

SoundCloud is undoubtedly gaining influence, but there is still a massive population on the Internet it has not reached. The company says it reaches about 8% of the internet on a daily basis, and CEO Alex Ljung says he wants to capture the remaining 92%.

I don’t want to speculate on a user rebellion here. User numbers are up even though there has been a vocal group that is voicing their frustrations. To be fair, SoundCloud has responded to certain criticisms by changing/adding features to their new platform. It’s a continual back and forth.

Seems to me that many early adopters/users of SoundCloud believe they are “selling out”. And they probably are. It is a common evolutionary phase of companies – they start off as small, grassroots organizations then evolve into larger firms catering to a wider, more mainstream target audience (which of course equates to bigger profits). Many people don’t want to see that kind of growth because it means what they originally loved will likely change from what it was. No one wants New Coke. It’s the same kind of resistance people have to a small town being taken over by big box stores and retail chains or hearing their favorite ‘pet’ underground bands being played on Top 40 stations. But I can definitely empathize with these SoundCloud users. It was something special in the beginning to them but now it’s turning into something they no longer recognize – a different “species” as was observed.

“There’s a huge amount of people that don’t speak explicitly what they think,” says the CEO. “But they speak a lot with their usage numbers. Companies usually see tremendous usage uplift. When Facebook introduced the newsfeed way back, it seemed like everybody was against it and yet usage went up like crazy.”

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Maybe higher usage numbers don’t reflect a better user experience. Maybe they reflect that the changes to Facebook’s format made the site less useful for people who could only keep tabs on their newsfeed periodically rather than continuously. It’s almost as if the new design sought to punish people for looking away from the site for too long.

“We reformulated gasoline so that it disappears from your gas tank if it’s left there unused for more than fifteen minutes, and check out these sales numbers! People can’t get enough of the stuff! They must be really happy with us!”

Hey Ryan this line is a bit misleading: “since its redesign, average plays per user have gone from about 6,900 a month in December to more than 12,000 plays in March, according to digital music tracker Next Big Sound.”

That’s average plays per artist not users You scared me for a second… Was about to throw in the towel on our site. Otherwise great article.